Money and mnemotechnics

Jon Roffe (University of New South Wales)

Abstract

It is broadly agreed that money plays three key roles: as a means of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. Depending on a variety of other presuppositions, however, which of these functions is taken to be primary differs a great deal.

The goal of this paper is to consider a necessary condition for any use of money that is rarely the object of economic thought, namely the form of social memory in which the inscription of monetary activity is inscribed. The importance of this condition is particularly prominent in new digital forms of currency, such as Bitcoin, and the blockchain protocol that it makes use of.

I will consider this problematic in light of Nietzsche’s analysis of memory in the second Essay of the Genealogy of Morals, which outlines the nature and advent of social memory through just such an act of inscription.

Author

Jon Roffe is a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. His most recent book, Abstract Market Theory (Palgrave 2015) advances a new philosophy of the market.

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